I think the majority of support is for the owners at this point.
It might have been for the players initially, but their refusal to negotiate has put them in a bad light.

I doubt Bettman loses his job over this.

He got the owners the cap they wanted last lockout, and he'll get them a better revenue share this time. Fans might not like him, but the owners -- the ones who pay him, and whom he works for -- are getting what they want from him.

I think the players need to step down, and start negotiating in the owners' framework instead of trying to create a new framework where they are guaranteed annual raises, regardless of revenue.

I think the majority of support is for the owners at this point.
It might have been for the players initially, but their refusal to negotiate has put them in a bad light.

I doubt Bettman loses his job over this.

He got the owners the cap they wanted last lockout, and he'll get them a better revenue share this time. Fans might not like him, but the owners -- the ones who pay him, and whom he works for -- are getting what they want from him.

I think the players need to step down, and start negotiating in the owners' framework instead of trying to create a new framework where they are guaranteed annual raises, regardless of revenue.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bubba Thudd

I call BS. The NHL invited the players to negotiate last year, while they were playing. Players chose not to. This is their (players') war.

And they will lose the war. They need to start negotiating, so they can at least win a few of the battles.

"No sympathy."

I think this line of thinking is what the NHL is trying to convince people of, but I simply don't see how it's true.

The league started off negotiations with a slap in the face, lowball offer with the hopes that it would be the starting point for negotiations, which would give them the upper hand. The PA smartly refused to use that as a starting point, and created an alternative view where the players didn't have to shoulder most of the burden in helping the handful of struggling franchises the NHL insists need help.

The HRR cut last year was 57% for the players. The leagues first offer was 46%, UFA goes up from 7 seasons to 10, a max of five years on contracts, no more salary arbitration, and entry level deals are 5 years not 3.

I'm sorry, but that is not an offer of any kind.

Since then the league has finally made two more official offers that get closer to realistic deals. They're now offering a deal that takes the players cut from 49 down to 46 at the end of the deal. The players have offered a couple deals of their own, and basically breaks down to somewhere around 54% down to 52% at the end.

But it might be too late, because the NHL is posturing like they've come a long way, and are the only ones negotiating. They've come a short way from a fairy tail offer, and the PA has made two other offers themselves. The NHL has gone from asking the PA to give up almost everything, to give up a lot from where they are now.

That means the PA couldn't just come out with a reasonable offer to start off with. Bettman set the playing field with that first offer. If the PA started making reasonable offers they would have got eaten alive which is what Bettman hoped for. It's what he hoped for last time and held out long enough to get it. He's a little Napoleon bully, and even the players are saying they feel like they're getting bullied.

Now he's singing the same tune he did last time. If a deal isn't agreed upon by the deadline the NHL will pull it's offer. That's what they did last time, and it forced the process and all the posturing to start from scratch, and it lost the whole season. He's sinking the whole NHL ship with his bully tactics, and it's pretty sad.

The PA's doing a terrible job of trying to divert blame. If you're going to constantly prance around and state that you just love playing and that all you want to do is be able to compete than there never would have been an issue. What they mean to say is that competing and all is just fine, but they want to get paid a disproportionate amount of money for it. I can't think of too many successful business models where the employees are getting more than 50% of the profits.

As slimy as Bettman can be, he actually is the one that has been telling the truth here. He has flat out stated that the league thinks they are paying the players too much and they want the league to reduce it.

Meanwhile, every single NHLPA offer this far has the players making the $1.87 billion they are making today plus an annual raise. Have Fehr or any player stated they want to make more money than they currently are? No. They pretend they are the reasonable ones here while their offers are as unreasonable as Bettmans initial offer.

I blame both sides for not being able to get it done, but right now it seems to me that players are more unreasonable. It should be obvious a deal around 50/50 is analogous to every other sport and would be fair to both sides. NHL is at around 47% now. Players are still at 57%.

They should really write it into the next CBA that if an agreement can't be reached between the two sides prior to a season and arbitrator will be hired and their decision will be final. The NHL really looks bush league having as many lockouts as they have had.

Something I thought of last night. I have heard it mentioned that the NHLPA are trying to "take a stand" here on principles. Basically, giving a 24% rollback of their salary during the last lockout, and then the Owners want a further rollback this time. They're worried that at the expiration of each CBA that the owners are going to want another rollback.

Can't it just be put into some sort of provisioning that if the League and PA agree on an even split of 50/50 that that number can't be reduced any further, regardless of CBA's expiring?

What you can do is find something that works for both sides and make it a very long CBA (10 years). It's worrying that NHL proposes 6 years and NHLPA 5 years.

I figured that was the case...and so couldn't it be made into some sort of bylaw for the league? Because I feel that if the players had 100% assurances that the owners wouldn't keep going back to the "We need to reduce player salaries" well that there may have been a better chance to get this done before the lockout happened.

The CBA is like a Pizza , at the last work stoppage they had to decide how to make a pizza and that's what they did with the salary cap . Last time they had to make the dough , decided if they wanted pepperoni, mushrooms, olives and how much cheese they wanted on it ... that's why we had the lockout in 2004.

The problem is that they were expecting for 2012 a large pizza , with Atlanta moving to Winnipeg and all the revenu comming from the Canadian teams with a Can Dollar so strong compare to the US dollar. (They have to be careful coz the looney could go down and the profit from the Can teams will go down too as well as the NHL profit ).

So what they have right now insted of a lage pizza is an XXL Pizza, because mostly of the Canadian teams with their strong dollar, and everyone are fighting on the size of the slices. Players wants their share of the profit that's fine by me i agree at 100% , but they are acting like the owners are evil because they are making profits, when in reality only 10-12 teams are making profits .

I read somewhere that the reason that teams are sending down their stars on ELCs to AHL (Skinner, RNH, Eberle and so on) is to have the players not enjoy themselves riding buses and put pressure on them that way.

It seems a little cynical view to me. Having the players play in an organization where you have some say surely is something the NHL may think benefits the players development?

Haha what a whiny little *****. Only Brian Burke would make a comment like this about a major sports network as the General Manager of an NHL team, just because they ranked him last in some pointless opinion poll.

Haha what a whiny little *****. Only Brian Burke would make a comment like this about a major sports network as the General Manager of an NHL team, just because they ranked him last in some pointless opinion poll.

He was asked a question about. What you would want him to do avoid it?

I'm not a Burke fan at all, but he can say what he can and comment on whatever he wants. I also agree with what he said and ESPN had this coming from 7 years ago, IMO.